Cuomo Fighting For Political Life

FLUSHING, N.Y. — Squeezed into a city block between Jane's Place for Wigs and the Kam Ying Chinese restaurant is the hope of all those people who want New York Gov. Mario M. Cuomo out of office.

Reception Hall in this Queens strip is where Republican state Sen. George E. Pataki is schmoozing with 150 people from northern Flushing. He is trying to assure these one-time Democrats-for-life that they're not rolling some loaded political dice by turning away from Cuomo, the Local Guy Who Made It.

Pataki, though, is just the sideshow. Though this bash is sponsored by the United Republicans of Western Queens, the most striking thing about the room are the huge yellow banners that say, ``Vote Against Cuomo.'' It's easier to read the prices on the potato chip bags lying on the big round tables than it is to find Pataki signs.

Being against Cuomo and for what's-his-name has become fashionable in key parts of New York City these days, notably in white ethnic communities in Brooklyn and Queens. Cuomo grew up in Queens, the son of Italian immigrants. He is proud of that, and uses it forcefully to show how the American dream can come true.

But today, the three-term governor's bid for another four years is running headfirst into a different kind of emotional turbulence. His ethnics are scared, scared of crime, scared of losing their jobs, scared of seeing their old neighborhoods change. They have inched to the side of Republicans like Ronald Reagan and Mayor Rudolph Giuliani. They are edging close to abandoning their local hero, Cuomo.

``Three times,'' says Frank Ceceo as he rests his arm on the cantaloupes at Top Tomato, a market in Brooklyn's Bensonhurst section. ``They broke into my house three times.''

Bring back the death penalty, says Ceceo -- something Cuomo does not want to do. So what if Cuomo is Italian? ``A lot of Italians hate one another,'' Ceceo said. ``There are a lot of Italian people I don't like.''

There's an echo of this in Queens. ``Mario Cuomo is definitely on the side of criminals. He thinks everything is society's fault,'' said Larry Sarraga, an investment banker.

Polls show Cuomo ahead in this three-way race, which also includes independent B. Thomas Golisano, who Wednesday won the endorsement of Texas billionaire Ross Perot. But if Cuomo wins, it may be less a show of affection than an inability of ethnic voters to walk away from a known, homegrown quantity.

``These people are Democrats in the process of changing,'' said Rep. Jerrold L. Nadler, D-N.Y., who represents parts of Manhattan and Brooklyn, ``and they know Cuomo hasn't solved their problems. But they're still not completely comfortable voting Republican.''

Cuomo is very much a man of his city.

He comes off as brash but caring, warm yet abrasive. He is hard to like, yet irresistible because he has a style, a passion and even a savvy that's hard to find anywhere else in America.

``The governor is very smart,'' said Gerald Benjamin, director of the Center for New York State and Local Government Studies in Albany.

But at the same time, ``he has an adversarial style, and his show has been playing for a long time,'' Benjamin said.

Typically, the longer a politician holds a closely watched job, the more enemies he makes. As Benjamin put it, ``over 12 years, you get everyone mad at you for something.''

He ran for New York City mayor in 1977 against Edward I. Koch, and lost. But five years later they would battle again in a bitter 1982 gubernatorial race, and Cuomo won, and soon afterward became an important national spokesman for the Democrats' fading liberal wing. He riveted the country with his 1984 Democratic National Convention speech, when he offered his vision of the nation as a ``family.''

Ironically, it was Cuomo's vision of his own family that made him a lonely political figure. After that speech, he went home to be alone, rather than mixing it up with other politicos. He repeatedly turned down those who wanted him to enter the presidential race, and last year told an interested President Clinton he did not want a Supreme Court nomination.

Cuomo, though, presses on in New York, seeking to become the first governor of the state to win a fourth term since Nelson A. Rockefeller did it in 1970.

Of course, Rockefeller, a New York legend of another era, won that race with just 52 percent of the vote. Cuomo knows that, and keeps pushing hard, bringing in first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton for a Manhattan fund-raiser Wednesday and Clinton for a rally Thursday.

Cuomo understands the reluctance of those swing voters to embrace him.

``The tide has turned,'' he said during his appearance with Hillary Clinton, speaking about his surge in the polls.``There's no question about that. But I've been in this tide before. There's an ebb and flow, and the tide comes in and then it goes out.''

New York Republicans knew long ago this election would be a referendum on Cuomo; they could have written in ``not Cuomo'' on the GOP line and attracted lots of votes.